Every year my favorite blog for web junkies puts out “The Survey for People Who Make Websites.” Well, the 2008 one is up and functional. If you’re a web monkey like me, take a couple minutes and fill it out. It really helps get an idea of where our industry is, and not from an analyst point of view, but from the point of view from all of us in the trenches. Granted those trenches are usualy air conditioned with somewhat comfy steelcase chairs, but trenches none the less…

The vending machine strikes again! This time instead of the usual casualty (peanut m&m’s) its decided to target the health-nuts in our department: Quaker Honey Rice Cakes. So far four people have stepped up to the plate and LOST.

Todays board:
Vending Machine: 4
Employees: 0

Its hard to tell from the image, but there’s actually a fourth bag that almost freed the second one. Good Luck to victim contendor #5.

I would have written about this sooner, but my iMac was out for warranty repairs… Now that its back and better than ever, I had the time to try out the new appTapp software used to get installer.app onto the iPhone. The first version of iPhone installer.app required a number of steps… opening up a terminal, typing in commands, home/power restarts and etc. For those newbz that aren’t familiar with that stuff, it may have swayed you to hold off. Hold off no more. This thing is AMAZING. You simply double click, select your firmware and then you’re off and running. The application downloads the firmware, reboots your phone and copies everything over all in the background. I HIGHLY recommend that you use this to hack your iPhone. Install the bsd utilities, open ssh and you’ll have everything you need to copy ringtones and games right on over. take that Steve Jobs!

As I am sure you have already done some searching on this, I will just make this a quick post to the full story and instructions on Gizmodo.com. The process is to use appTapp (OSx) or iBrickr (WinBl0wz) to install Nullriver’s Installer.app on your phone. These two apps automate the jailbreak process and put the installer.app on your phone which then allows you to install all kinds of wonderful things via the internet. My phone is (was) running a few games, openssh server/client and a nice terminal services emulator and the damn thing just worked. I can’t wait for apple to release the sanctioned tools and ability to do this, but until then, this freakin R0Xz (that was for you Josh LOLz).

Here are your instructions, given to you with love:
How to Mod your iPhone!!

Good luck!

Its that time of year again when the bookworms of the world crawl out of their holes and tell us if we are going to have a long winter or not. Those of us fortunate enough to witness the spectacle are left to wonder when these pigmentally challenged masses last saw the light of day… As I write this I am surounded by faeries and wizards and even a few straight people who have taken the evening off from their busy lives of reading and feeding their cat to wait in line to buy harry potter #7.

Tonight I join the masses due to the unavoidable tug of my little sister who is captivated by a nearsighted young man obsessed with playing with his wand… and fighting off a creepy old man who “speaks” to “snakes”. I am not sure whether or not I will survive to see the morning, but if I don’t, tell nancy I love her.

Oh, and tell her to buy extra blankets… I think the guy next me saw his shadow…

Pardon me while I crack open a cold one for all my SunRocket buddies who couldn’t be here… rest in peace fellas.

For all of you poor schmucks who got the shaft by SunRocket’s demise this week, here’s my advice on how to help ease the suffering.

1. Grab a baseball bat or some other blunt object and your “Gizmo” and then relieve your frustrations by re-enacting your favorite scene from OfficeSpace.
2. Accept that your phone number is lost. Sure you can port it over to other services, but in reality these services are just as, if not more, expensive and are basically in the same boat. Once you come to terms with this, the healing process can begin.
3. Go over to Skype.com and sign up for Skype Pro. It will cost you $3 a month, but offers some cool discounts and features such as voicemail.
4. Buy yourself a Skype-In phone number for more than 50% off the normal price of $60 (a perk of Skype Pro). You can get a new number for pretty much any area code you live in.
5. Sign up for Skype Out Unlimited calling for the US and Canada for $29.99 for a year. This allows you to call any phone in the US and Canada without incurring any additional costs.
6. Pick up one of the various phone handsests for Skype displayed in the skype store.
   Many of these phones do not require a computer in order to run. Some even operate completely off Wi-Fi connections and allow you to take your home phone anywhere you have a hotspot connection. I personally use the Philips Voip841 handset which allows me to add up to 4 additional handsets throughout my house and doesnt require a PC. If you watch theNerds.net you can usually pick this up for $100. They sellout of these regularly, so you just gotta check daily.
7. Once you have all this, you merely plug in your phone, login with your new skype account and start making and accepting calls to both landline phones and other skype contacts for free ($29.99 a year).

There are so many options in the VoIP Arena these days you really cant go wrong. It all comes down to what you use your home phone for. If you have a cell phone and don’t mind using that to call 911, then this solution may work well for you. The core features end up costing around $60 a year to make unlimited calls, which is quite cheap and then you can add funds to your account to make equally cheap international calls as well. There is also the benefit that you can run the skype software from a computer running any OS from any location with an internet connection. So if you are a constant traveler and you have access to broadband connections wherever you go, you can use the skype software (or a wi-fi skype phone) to handle your calls on the road.

I’ve been using Skype as my home phone for almost two years now and I honestly couldn’t be happier with the service. The call quality is wonderful, the service is reliable, the accessories are fantastic and its one of the largest VoIP networks in the world. So before you spend more time and money on therapy due to SunRocket, give Skype a whirl. You may be pleasantly surprised.

Right now we’re sitting in the after lunch session and I must say: I feel bad for the presenter. The food coma’s are setting in around the room and even I’m guilty of it. I am not sure what this session is about, but I know he is stalking about how to actually make applications. The interesting part of this session is with regard to occasionally connected applications. With air, we as developers need to take into consideration the fact that computers don’t always have an active network connection. To counter this, you can develop listeners in air that monitor the network connection and are capable of switching immediately from live data, to sqlLite stored flat file data or image caches and etc. I am not sure how useful this will be for the kind of applications I will develop, however I may surprise myself when I get neck deep in it.

We have reached the first break. Ebay just gave a great demo of their SanDimas application written for air. They make great use of flash in the application to display images in a flipbook style. They even metioned that they were working on a way to parse the ebay listings for images and include them in the animations. Really cool stuff!

Right now I am currently live at the adobe air conference in la. They just made a nice anouncement about Linux support for air applications by the End of the year!!! This mean that you will have native support to the Linux file system. This is fantastic news for all you Linux developers wanting to leverge air to you apps! I will post more throughout the day as more of the demonstrations progress.

After an eventful weekend, I am now the proud owner of a shiny new 4gb iPhone. Pardon the pun, but iLove. Not that I don’t love my Nancy, but come on, can my Nancy send email wirelessly? HAHAHA… Seriously though, this phone is beautiful. The interface is clean, the applications are responsive and though everyone was worried about smudges, the screen is so bright you just don’t notice them. If you are worried about the lack of iChat on the phone, browse on over to http://iphone.beejive.com and enjoy an iPhone friendly IM client that supports all the major versions. I found it worked well enough to keep even me happy. As I continue to play, I will post more on my thoughts. I am also working on a few apps of my own. We’ll see how that goes.